Export Exchange public folder to PST from PowerShell

Is there a PowerShell cmdlet to export the contents of the public folder from Exchange 2007 into a PST on the network? I've got about 100 public folders that need archiving to different places on the network and would like to automate the process.

Also then need to be able to delete the public folder.

If not PowerShell, are there other utilities that can do the same from the command line?

Thanks, Rob.

Solution 1:

I believe that without 3rd party tools, you'll need to use Outlook to export the public folders.

Solution 2:

Even five years on I couldn't find any examples of how to do this, so I used Glen Scales' excellent EWS & PowerShell blog posts to cobble this together. It's tweaked for Exchange 2013 SP1, but the functionality is pretty basic so it should work on earlier versions too.

Script to export old Public Folders to a share on the filesystem

#Needs to run an account with PublishingAuthor rights to the PFs
#
# Kev Maitland 08/09/15

$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri http://yourMailServer.yourDomain.local/PowerShell/ -Authentication Kerberos 
Import-PSSession $Session -AllowClobber

$EWSServicePath = '\\yourMailServer\C$\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\Web Services\2.2\Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.dll'
Import-Module $EWSServicePath

#If necessary, grant Owner permissions to each folder the Public Folder hierarchy to ensure we export everything
#Get-PublicFolder -Identity "\" -Recurse | Add-PublicFolderClientPermission -AccessRights Owner -User "yourDomain\HighlyPriveligedAccount"


#Set some variables
$ExchVer = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeVersion]::Exchange2013_SP1
$ewsUrl = "https://mail.yourDomain.co.uk/EWS/Exchange.asmx"
$upnExtension = "yourDomain.local"
$smtpServer = "yourMailServer.yourDomain.local"
$pFRootPath = "\"
$outputPathRoot = "\\HV05\PF"

#Prepare some functions From Glen Scales http://gsexdev.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/public-folder-ews-how-to-rollup-part-1.html
function FolderIdFromPath{  
    param ($FolderPath = "$( throw 'Folder Path is a mandatory Parameter' )")  
    process{  
        ## Find and Bind to Folder based on Path    
        #Define the path to search should be seperated with \    
        #Bind to the MSGFolder Root    
        $folderId = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderId([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WellKnownFolderName]::PublicFoldersRoot)     
        $tfTargetFolder = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Folder]::Bind($service,$folderId)    
        #Split the Search path into an array    
        $fldArray = $FolderPath.Split("\")  
         #Loop through the Split Array and do a Search for each level of folder  
        for ($lint = 1; $lint -lt $fldArray.Length; $lint++) {  
            #Perform search based on the displayname of each folder level  
            $fvFolderView = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderView(1)  
            $SfSearchFilter = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.SearchFilter+IsEqualTo([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderSchema]::DisplayName,$fldArray[$lint])  
            $findFolderResults = $service.FindFolders($tfTargetFolder.Id,$SfSearchFilter,$fvFolderView)  
            if ($findFolderResults.TotalCount -gt 0){  
                foreach($folder in $findFolderResults.Folders){  
                    $tfTargetFolder = $folder                 
                }  
            }  
            else{  
                "Error Folder Not Found"   
                $tfTargetFolder = $null   
                break   
            }      
        }   
        if($tfTargetFolder -ne $null){ 
            return $tfTargetFolder.Id.UniqueId.ToString() 
        } 
    } 
} 
function getPublicFolderViaEws([string]$publicFolderPath){
    $folderId = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderId(FolderIdFromPath -FolderPath $publicFolderPath)
    [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Folder]::Bind($service,$folderId)    
    }

#Get set up using the current user's security context
$windowsIdentity = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()
$sidbind = "LDAP://<SID=" + $windowsIdentity.user.Value.ToString() + ">"
$aceuser = [ADSI]$sidbind
$service = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeService($exchver)
$service.Url = $ewsUrl
$service.AutodiscoverUrl($aceuser.mail.ToString())

$propertySet = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.PropertySet([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.BasePropertySet]::FirstClassProperties)  #Get all the default properties of the items in the Public Folders
$propertySet.Add([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ItemSchema]::MimeContent)  #Add the MimeContent property too, so that we can send it directy to the filestream later



foreach ($folderPS in Get-PublicFolder -Recurse){
    New-Item -Path "$outputPathRoot$($folderPS.ParentPath)\$($folderPS.Name)" -ItemType Directory #Make a filesystem folder to match the Public Folder hierarchy
    $folderEws = getPublicFolderViaEws -publicFolderPath "$($folderPS.ParentPath)\$($folderPS.Name)".Replace("\\","\") #Bodge the odd occasion where we end up with two backslashes in a folder name
    $itemView =  New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ItemView(10)  
    $foundItems = $null  
    do{  
        $foundItems = $service.FindItems($folderEws.Id,$itemView) #Get the first batch of objects in the current Public Folder
        [Void]$service.LoadPropertiesForItems($foundItems,$propertySet) #Load the properties we specified earlier
        $i = $null
        foreach($email in $foundItems.Items){
            while(Test-Path "$outputPathRoot$($folderPS.ParentPath)\$($folderPS.Name)\$($email.Subject.Replace(":",'').Replace("/",'').Replace("\",'').Replace("*",'').Replace("?",'').Replace("<",'').Replace(">",'').Replace("|",''))$i"){ #Remove all illegal filesystem characters from the subject of the e-mail. If the result already exists on the filesystem, add an incremented number until it is unique (so that we don't accidentally overwrite e-mail threads)
                $i++
                }
            [System.IO.File]::WriteAllBytes("$outputPathRoot$($folderPS.ParentPath)\$($folderPS.Name)\$($email.Subject.Replace(":",'').Replace("/",'').Replace("\",'').Replace("*",'').Replace("?",'').Replace("<",'').Replace(">",'').Replace("|",''))$i.eml", $email.MimeContent.Content) #Stream the MimeContent to a file on the filesystem
            }
        $itemView.Offset += $foundItems.Items.Count  #Get ready to process the next batch of e-mails in the Public Folder
        }
    while($foundItems.MoreAvailable -eq $true) 
    }